Technology

Instagram starts showing IGTV video previews in news feed

Instagram has announced it will show previews of its IGTV videos in the user’s news feed. The videos will be from creators that the user follows. There will be an option to watch the full video in IGTV by tapping on it. The announcement was made on Twitter.

“Now, you can preview IGTV videos in your feed. When there’s a new video from someone you follow, you can tap from your feed to watch the full video in IGTV,” Instagram said in a tweet. The company also posted a short video showcasing how the previews will appear in the user’s timeline and the ‘watch full video’ tab that will be available at the bottom left.

The move is clearly aimed at driving more people to IGTV, which was launched as a standalone app for long-form vertical videos, last year in June. IGTV is also a separate tab within Instagram as well. The IGTV app is available for Android as well as iOS users.

Separately, Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri put out a post on the company’s official blog describing changes that will be made to the platform to handle self-harm content. Mosseri has said that self-harm graphics, such as cutting will not be allowed on the platform.

“We will not show non-graphic, self-harm related content – such as healed scars – in search, hashtags and the explore tab, and we won’t be recommending it,” the post reads.

Instagram recently experimented with a horizontal scroll interface, which was rolled back quickly after users complained about the new design. The platform also added the ‘walkie-talkie’ feature for Direct, which lets users send voice messages in Direct.